- published: 31 Oct 2013
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The Abaza language (Абаза Бызшва, Abaza Byzšwa) is a language of the Caucasus mountains in the Russian Karachay–Cherkess Republic by the Abazins. It consists of two dialects, the Ashkherewa dialect and the T'ap'anta dialect, which is the literary standard.
Abaza is spoken by approximately 35,000 people in Russia, where it is written in a Cyrillic alphabet, as well as another 10,000 in Turkey, where the Latin script is used.
Abaza, like its relatives in the family of Northwest Caucasian languages, is highly agglutinative and has a large consonantal inventory (63 phonemes) coupled with a minimal vowel inventory (two vowels). It is very closely related to Abkhaz, but it preserves a few phonemes which Abkhaz lacks, such as a voiced pharyngeal fricative. Work on Abaza has been carried out by W. S. Allen, Brian O'Herin, and John Colarusso.
The vowels /o, a, u/ may have a /j/ in front of it.